


High-School-English Symbolism

by OceanMelon



Series: short klance works [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: //mentions of abortion, //mentions of miscarriage, M/M, No Plot, but mostly this is just fluff, fluffy fluffy goodness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-21
Updated: 2017-09-21
Packaged: 2019-01-01 06:11:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12150327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OceanMelon/pseuds/OceanMelon
Summary: Lance McClain has three tattoos and he knows exactly what they all mean.





	High-School-English Symbolism

**Author's Note:**

> I guess i haven't really posted anything for this fandom on here yet... uh, hi? This is just a little drabble thing that i was working on to kill some time. It's cross posted on my writing/art blog [here](https://thecowardlycreative.tumblr.com/post/165524483504/high-school-english-symbolism) if you want to be a doll and pop over to reblog it for me. Thanks and happy reading!

Lance McClain has three tattoos, Keith discovers when they’re lying together, naked and sated, in his bed for the first time. He’d noticed, of course, the sleeve before -- a complicated wave pattern made up of delicate line work that wraps around his elbow from mid-forearm to mid-bicep like a brace -- and he thinks he might have caught glimpses of the one on his thumb before, at least enough to remember it looking vaguely snake-like. But it’s the third, a single lily, startling white against cinnamon skin, that lies in the hollow of his hip bone that takes Keith somewhat by surprise. It’s such a little thing; plain black and white, stylised and simple and all on its lonesome with no accompanying anything to draw attention to it… It just doesn’t really seem like Lance’s style.

Hadn’t stopped Keith from sucking on it hard until the stark white dulled to mottled purple and Lance was pawing at the sheets, tiny, desperate puffs of air escaping his mouth, though. 

He runs his fingers over it then, as Lance dozes against him, warm and pliant, filled with equal parts satisfaction and guilt at the mess Lance’s soft skin had become. Lance hums and shifts a little closer to him, obviously not quite as asleep as Keith had thought. 

“D’you like it?” he mumbles, voice rough.

Keith hums an affirmative. “S’pretty,” he replies. “Doesn’t really seem like you, though.”

Lance makes some vague sound that could either be agreement or confusion and rolls over fully so that he can bundle Keith into his arms against his chest. 

“Did you know,” he says lowly once his boyfriend has been successfully restrained in a vice-like cuddle, “I was almost a dad once.”

Keith gives a little jolt at this information but doesn’t say anything. 

“I was seventeen,” Lance continues, “and me and my girlfriend at the time -- Allison, her name was -- well, we thought we were in love. Maybe we were. I’m not sure anymore. But that’s why, when we found out Ali was pregnant -- and who knows how that happened. Maybe the condom broke, maybe it was faulty, maybe we were drunk. God only knows. The point is, once we found out… If we were going to be together forever anyway, why not get started on a family right then, right? We didn’t worry too much about it. My parents… They weren’t wholly against the idea, not like Ali’s were, but they weren’t jumping for joy either. They were practical. They sat us both down and talked about the future -- what we’d have to give up, what extra things we’d have to learn, what we’d gain in return; weighed up all the pros and cons. I can’t… I can’t really describe to you what it was like when, at the end of it all, my mama took my hand and said, ‘If you want to do this, we will be behind you 110%. But you have to be sure. You are not God, mijo. You cannot take a life back once it has been given.’”

Lance takes a deep breath and Keith presses his nose against his throat in all the unspoken reassurance he can. 

“Turns out it didn’t really matter, in the end,” says Lance eventually. “My baby died long before he could be considered properly alive. And, afterward, Ali and me… we weren’t quite as in love as we thought we were.” 

His hand covered Keith’s over the tiny, white flower, calloused fingers brushing against it, and Keith’s guilt multiplied exponentially at a sudden realisation.

It’s a white lily. A funeral flower.

He’d just given Lance a massive hickey on the remembrance tattoo for his dead son. He tried not to groan too loudly in shame but Lance just chuckled lightly, rubbed his hands lightly over Keith’s back and let him cling to him tightly in apology.

“I was going to get the date as well,” says Lance conversationally, “make it more obvious. But then I realised I didn’t really need to. I wasn’t really going to forget the date that happened.”

It’s silent for a long time after that. Lance’s fingers keep skimming delicately over Keith’s naked back, his slow, even breaths the only sound in the moonlit room, and Keith fights desperately for something to say -- something he can possibly say after a story like that. 

“You didn’t have to tell me all that,” he eventually decides on.

Lance hums. “I know.”

“Thank you,” says Keith.

“I wanted you to know.” Then Lance takes a deep breath, lets it out again, and sits up so quickly that Keith goes rolling off him like water.

“Oi…” grumbles Keith as he shuffles over so that he can drape himself across his boyfriend again. 

“But that one was fine,” Lance continues as if the heavy atmosphere had never been there at all. “It only took, like, less than an hour and didn’t even hurt that much -- probably because I’d been prepared for it to be excruciating, seeing as it was the first. The sleeve took four sessions over two months.”

“I’m actually impressed,” says Keith, grabbing Lance’s elbow to examine it. 

“Why, thank you,” says Lance.

“You actually managed to sit still long enough to get this done.”

“Uh!  _ Rude _ .” He grabs at his heart in mock-offence.

“I’m kidding, Lance,” laughs Keith. “Though I bet it has some really pretentious meaning.” A second of silence passes before he rethinks what he just said. “I mean, it just looks like that sort of thing. Abnormal and pretentious rather than something that could be understood at a glance.”

“Again:  _ Rude. _ It’s not pretentious. It’s… It’s… You know… Deep.”

“Pretentious.”

“Dick,” says Lance with a smile and bends to place a wet kiss against Keith’s forehead. “I’ll have you know this is symbolic of all the important people in my life.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. See the wave?” He takes his elbow back to outline the thin, sketchy blue line in his skin. “That’s me. And inside it, filling me in and making me  _ whole  _ is everyone who helps make me who I am. The rocks are Hunk because he breaks me.”

“He breaks you?” says Keith flatly. 

“Yeah, man, look.” And he twists his arm a little more to show the pale yellow rocks that are almost hidden against his skin tone. “He’s the rocks that break the wave, sets it off, gives it purpose, makes it actually a wave. The vines are Pidge.” His finger shifts to the leaves that sprout between the rocks and crest the waves. 

“Doesn’t Pidge hate the outdoors?”

“That’s not the point! The point is that these vines aren’t even really doing anything, they’re just going about their planty business, and they still manage to curl around me, protect me from the salt spray, support me without even trying. Just by existing, you know? Allura is the flowers. She’s the beauty amidst the chaos.”

“Trust you to reduce Allura to eye candy.”

“Shame on you, Keith! Beauty is more than eye candy! Beauty is hope. And to be so beautiful while surrounded by such… such  _ destruction  _ that an angry sea can bring takes enormous strength.”

“And Shiro?” Keith prompts.

Lance twists his arm again, almost knocking Keith in the head, to try and show the awkward patch of skin just above his elbow where an eagle, all in black, sits perched upon the rocks, gazing out to sea. “He’s the eagle. He keeps watch and makes sure I’m always breaking in the right direction.”

Keith smiles but doesn’t say anything for a long moment, his fingers coiling tiny swirls over the waves, before he realises that Lance has stopped talking. “But… that’s…” he says, “that’s everything. I’m not… So, I’m not on there? 

“Well, I don’t know who we are to each other yet,” Lance replies, sliding down the headboard again so Keith was lying on his chest rather than his lap. “You’re an enigma, Keith Kogane. I’m still trying to figure you out.” And he kisses him softly.

“And what about your family?” says Keith after a moment. “I know you…” He makes a vague gesture, the meaning of which is unknown. “Don’t they ‘make you who you are?”

Lance just laughs and hold up his thumb.

“Got them right here,” he says with a sharp thumbs-up.

“Right,” scoffs Keith, tracing the two coiling pieces of rope that run down the outside of Lance’s left thumb to pool into a tangled mess where it meets his wrist.

He’s trying to pretend that his fingers aren’t feather-light, almost reverent where they touch Lance’s skin but he’s not doing a very good job.

“And what sort of high-school-English symbolism does this one contain?” he asks.

“Oh, none,” says Lance easily. “Nothing at all. I just  _ know  _ this one is for my family and so, every time I see it when I’m, like, typing or doing the dishes or whatever, I remember them and know…” He trails off.

Keith waits barely ten seconds before he’s elbowing Lance in the ribs and prompting: “And know--?”

Lance coughs awkwardly and twists his hand to lace their fingers together probably more violently than he meant to.

“Oh, you know…” he mumbles, ears pink and grip tight. “That I’m not, like… ‘alone’ or… Like, I’ve always got family even if they’re not there right that second.”

Keith rolls his eyes; more because he doesn’t know what to say than anything else. It isn’t like ‘family’ was a topic he can heavily relate to, after all.

“Maybe that’s where you are,” says Lance. “Part of the family tattoo.” He feels Keith’s breath stutter at that and keeps talking, gesturing with one hand flying into the air, not quite sure what he’d just admitted to. “Of course, you’ll need your own.” No, that’s worse. More embarrassing. “If you want it, I mean. We haven’t exactly been together for years and it could be awkward if we ever broke up -- not that I’m planning on that, it’s just that --”

It’s Keith’s turn to wrap his arms around the other and crush him into a cuddle. “Stop talking,” he says. “I’m trying to use my words -- you know, what you always tease me about being unable to do.”

Lance laughs but it’s muffled against Keith’s chest and he snakes one arms around the other’s waist to draw him in closer. He’s so warm.

“I… don’t really… know...” starts Keith and then groans in frustration and Lance laughs again. “Don’t you laugh at me!” Lance laughs harder. “Honestly, I don’t really know if I can put it in words. You want to… put a permanent reminder of me on your skin that you’ll carry around with you every moment of every day?”

“I mean,” says Lance from under the blankets. “I’m not opposed to it. But if you think it’s weird or creepy, I won’t do it.”

And Keith is suddenly intensely glad that the blanket is blocking his boyfriend’s view. He really doesn’t need to know how much Keith was blushing right then, it would be a boost to his ego that Keith could live without. But the blanket’s also a barrier between them, a barrier that is intensely unwanted right now, so Keith ducks underneath.

Lance’s eyes are bright in the dark and he has a mixture of fondness and vague worry on his face.

Keith just kisses him. “I really, really like you,” he says and Lance smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> once again:  
> [my main](http://whereimnotme.tumblr.com/)  
> [writing/art](https://thecowardlycreative.tumblr.com/)  
> [vld specific](https://vlddump.tumblr.com/)
> 
> And, don’t forget, if you like what I do you can always [buy me a kofi?](https://ko-fi.com/U7U2GBKM) Maybe?


End file.
